Variety's Scores

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For 17,835 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,166 out of 17835
  2. Mixed: 7,032 out of 17835
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17835
17835 movie reviews
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Christmas
    A rare holiday treat, a package that's both thoughtfully selected and sure to please its intended recipients.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How to Get Ahead in Advertising
    The picture would be genuinely hilarious were the subject matter not so overworked.
  3. Laggies
    If the narrative progression feels too tidy and circumscribed, Shelton’s talent for bringing out the best in her actors remains satisfyingly intact.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eureka
    Even by his own standards, Nicolas Roeg's Eureka is an indulgent melodrama [based on a book by Marshall Houts] about the anticlimactic life of a greedy gold prospector after he has struck it rich.
  5. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    The film's chief pleasures are those of practiced professionals doing their job, and doing it well. None of the stars here is slacking, and their combined, easily resumed chemistry ensures that this sequel, for good long stretches, feels like old times — even if it's hard to imagine fans of its predecessor cherishing repeat viewings to quite the same extent.
  6. True Lies
    Yet even with its ribald laughs and spectacular action sequences (clearly seeking to up the ante on the latter front), the movie gets mired in a comedic midsection that wears the audience down, sapping their energy before the film shifts to a chaotic third act that just doesn't know when to quit.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SubUrbia
    Writer-director teamings seldom mesh as smoothly or suggest so many creative affinities as does the one at the heart of subUrbia, a brooding, incisive comedy that blends the talents of helmer Richard Linklater and playwright Eric Bogosian.
  8. Free Fire
    The fact that they could all lay down their weapons and finish the deal heightens Wheatley’s generally irreverent approach, all of which serves to remind that guns don’t kill people; insecure, overcompensating idiots do.
  9. Keanu
    An initially amusing but fatally overstretched action-comedy that marks a lamer-than-expected big-screen outing for Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.
  10. Zero Charisma
    Affectionately captures the tail end of a culture in which specialized dice, character sheets and hand-painted figurines were the gateway to elaborate flights of imagination.
  11. In the Earth
    The film feels right in line with the kind of mayhem that Wheatley has been serving up his entire career, including some graphically gory details that are hard to unsee. And in that way, it’s not unlike the pandemic itself, infecting our brains with sick ideas — which, of course, is just what a certain audience wants from a horror movie.
  12. Beau Is Afraid
    Three hours doesn’t feel at all reasonable for such an uneven collection of sketches.
  13. A Haunting in Venice
    Playful turns from a shrewdly selected supporting cast elevate the case from just another murder mystery to suitably arch gothic horror.
  14. Megamind
    Comes off as a derivative wisecracking machine rather than a feat of sustained imagination.
  15. The Signal
    Borrowing heavily from the current trend in zombie comedy and apocalyptic horror but shifting it away from the usual undead norms, pic carves out a fresh angle in the crowded indie horror universe while blatantly stealing ideas from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse."
  16. Burn After Reading
    Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up.
  17. 12 Hour Shift
    Grant’s screenplay builds a Rube Goldbergian narrative of escalating, piled-up crises, from which she also engineers a just-credible-enough exit strategy.
  18. Invincible
    Handling both directing and cinematography duties, Core invests both with a clearly impassioned sense of place, period and perspective regarding this fanfare for common men.
  19. The Matrix Resurrections
    Essentially a greatest hits concert and a cover version rolled into one (complete with flashback clips to high points from past installments), the new movie is slick but considerably less ambitious in scope than the two previous sequels.
  20. Peter von Kant
    Everything in Fassbinder’s rightly canonized movie is fake, except the emotions. In Ozon’s loving, diverting but inessential homage, everything is real except the bitter, glycerine tears.
  21. Shutter Island
    Even when it's clear Scorsese has decided to employ fakery and allow it to be obvious, it's done with elegance and beauty.
  22. Allegro
    Sophomore effort by Danish helmer Christoffer Boe offers a mix of cerebral sci-fi conceits, baroque visual texture and romantic melancholy similar to that in his Cannes kudo-reaping debut, "Reconstruction." Still, pic is remarkably original and reps further evidence of a unique directorial vision.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shinjuku Incident
    Though hyped as a rare straight dramatic outing by Chan, the picture still has him displaying his action skills, if less sensationally than usual.
  24. Boiler Room
    Begins extremely well as a saga of greed and conspicuous consumption, but gradually loses its bite.
  25. This Girl's Life
    May not be a complete success, but it is in some ways that rarest of commodities in American movies: It is a movie about sex and sexuality, in its many perversions and permutations, done without falling back on an exploitatively comic or violent scenario.
  26. Diamonds and Rust
    Expertly edited chronicle doesn't lead to any major explosion, but reveals plenty -- little of it pleasant -- en-route.
  27. 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup
    Will interest Rivette admirers at fests and in the niche arena but will do nothing to broaden his appeal.
  28. The Parking Lot Movie
    Unfortunately, picture's concept doesn't stretch to 74 minutes.
  29. Amigo
    Good intentions can't breathe fresh life into cliches or dispel the overall impression of schematic didacticism.
  30. Wretches & Jabberers
    The ability to mix humor and emotion is the strong suit of this upbeat, music-saturated documentary.
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